scott klepesch's List: Education and Tecnhology Tools

Greenhow and her fellow researchers interviewed some 1,200 students in 13 high schools in Minneapolis/St. Paul, connecting with them through a Twin Cities social-service organization called Admission Possible that Greenhow and her husband cofounded seven years ago to prepare low-income students for college. Their first finding was just how popular these sites are among teens. Even though students came from families with incomes at or below $25,000 a year, 94 percent of them used the Internet, with 82 percent logging on from home. Of these, 77 percent had profiles on social networking sites, with 65 percent on MySpace, a significant minority on Facebook, and a smattering of others on sites such as Xanga and Gaiaonline. While Greenhow cautions that the study wasn't intended to be nationally representative, it is only slightly higher than national studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that 82 percent of teens with a family median income of $30,000 or less were online, and that among all teens, 58 percent had a profile on a SNS.